


Nothing is ever as it seems

by Inahumanform



Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-30
Packaged: 2018-01-10 14:19:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1160686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inahumanform/pseuds/Inahumanform
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A boy of seventeen waits on a wall for a girl. He's been doing it for a while. When she comes, he smiles and gets off his wall. She has pretty red hair, like his sister's. He gets on her bus, sits next to her, and they ride in silence for the rest of the journey to her home. Then they embrace, and she spends the night at his house. It doesn't sound too bad. </p>
<p>Until you think about the fact that the boy of seventeen is a Shadowhunter, the red haired girl a mundane, and that she doesn't know he is there until he breaks into her house through her window, throws a knife in her general direction, and she breaks his wrist. And then he kidnaps her and nearly turns her into a Forsaken. She spends the night paralysed in his bed.</p>
<p>Nothing is ever as it seems.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>This is a birthday gift for a friend. Happy birthday, Natasha. We all love you, you annoying little prat.</p>
<p>WARNING: There are gross bits, and graphic descriptions. This is not the kind of story that ends particularly happily.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. FirefliesandToothpaste

He had been here far too long already. And yet there was something, something still there, intangible but oh-so-strong, stopping him from leaving. A month- that's how long. It had started pretty normally. You know, the usual, hunting down an advanced species of Eidolon shape-shifter demon under the glamour of an angel- that sort of thing. She- if those creatures had true genders- had been trying to lure him in. She knew he was Nephilim- the marks were obvious to anyone who knew how to look hard enough- and had changed accordingly. It had been simple, almost too easy, to kill her. And then he left her borrowed wings on the floor of the Institute in New York. Along with an ominous note designed purely for trouble. He really had no intention of doing anything any time soon.

Certain types of shape-shifters retained the form of their last imitation, every Shadowhunter knew that. Inside and out. So the demon dripped angel blood, golden and pure. At least, it looked golden and pure. Unlike the blood of an angel, this blood was very much toxic. He should know, after all, it ran in his veins. What did that make him? Part angel. Part demon. Was there any human left in him? Clary hadn't thought so. No-one had. Least of all his mother. The last thought left a faint bitter taste he had never noticed before. Different. He was different, he knew that. He had never stayed before. Maybe it was a good thing. Maybe he was settling down. But no, he couldn't settle down. They'd find him. And then they'd kill him. And he had grown quite attached to his life. It seemed that he was becoming attached to this place, too. A small out-of-the-way town in a drizzly, dreary, grey place. It was hardly exotic. It was hardly Italy.

He had liked Italy. He spoke the language, knew the people. But England. England was something else. But here he was, sitting on some wall somewhere, waiting for something unknown that might never even turn up. But then. There. There it was. There she was. A flash of red hair, so bright and familiar to him. For a moment, he thought that it was Clary, but the figure was taller. She moved smoothly, floating lightly along, but not as gracefully as a Shadowhunter. A mundane then. Strange. Silently, he watched as she wove her way through the throngs, light on her feet and seeking gaps only there for a few moments. He sat and watched her pass. That was the first time he did so. But certainly not the last. He came to learn her schedule, sat inconspicuously on the wall, a glamour on his arm. Mundanes looked at him and through him, moving past, eager to do their petty business. He had laughed aloud once, and a startled young mundane looked up, narrowed his eyes and then walked on, a bland glaze coming over his features.

Sometimes it rained, and then she'd wear clunky blue-spotted wellington boots and carry a big black and blue umbrella with a peculiar blue box on it. Sometimes people would stop her, point at her umbrella and laugh. Not at her. No-one laughed at her. And then maybe they'd high-five. He would always shake his head at that, feeling like he was missing some piece of important human culture. But then sometimes the sun shone through the thick clouds, sharing cold bright light, and she'd wear a baggy t-shirt with a long black sleeved turtleneck underneath. And maybe bright jeans. And, of course, her red gloves. She never seemed to take those off. A vivid scarlet piece of fabric that didn’t cover her fingers, only the backs of her palms and hands. Her fingernails were painted black.

On those days, people would smile as she went by, as if she brought colour to them. He liked her. A bright splash of life where there were only wet browns and damp blacks. Maybe it wasn't a month. It could have been more. It could have been less. He wasn't sure any more. It was not apathy that made the days and nights blur into dark blues and limp greys, that made him forget what the date was- he'd been doing it long before her- but that sometimes she'd come and sometimes she wouldn't. There were a lot of sometimes, and he soon began to live his life by the days she would come. On some days she would come early, skipping past or strolling, maybe with her umbrella tucked neatly under her arm. But then there were days- and he loathed these days- where she would come late or not at all, dragging her feet, hair messy out of its band, obscuring her face. The best days were when she had a rolled up tube under her arm in place of the umbrella. It was then that she danced and sang as she sauntered along, taking no notice of the weather. On these days she might regress into a child, kicking up leaves and laughing to herself. He found it endearing. He found everything she did endearing. It was on one of these days- the second week, perhaps- when he had thought to follow her. It was as easy to get off the wall as it was to get on, but upon landing he discovered that his legs had stiffened and grown numb.

He ignored this, like a predator would ignore all but his prey, and followed her, the mundanes around him as oblivious to his presence as they were to everything else. They both threaded a clear path to where a post with a stiff white flag- no, a sign- stood solitary. She seemed to be waiting for something, and the longer she stood, the more people joined her. He was hostile at first to them, not that they would have noticed, invisible as he was to them all, but they would oft look around and shiver when they looked at where he wasn't. His hostility ensued until he realised the metal post with the indecipherable numbers upon it to be not dissimilar to those that mundanes in New York waited at. A bus stop, then. She stuck her hand out as a two-storied red vehicle came into view. Its front bore one of the numbers that was on the post, and when it stopped he correctly assumed that it was a bus. He had seen several buses like this during his wait on the wall over the past few days- or weeks, or months- all brandishing a different set of numbers. The doors on the bus opened, and she was the first- and only- to step on.

Every day for the next two weeks- he had counted the days and scored them carefully on his wall- he repeated this, each time watching carefully over her. But not actually what she was doing. Occasionally he had gotten on with her, the driver staring blindly past him. He would sit downstairs, and note the stop which she got off. But he'd always stay on until the very end of the journey, walking all the way back because it was something to do. Today was a tube day, and the object in question was held firmly in place with her left arm. In fact, it was the objects in question, since she seemed to be sporting at least five. They were unwieldy, and several times she would come close to dropping them, redeeming them just in time. Today had felt different. Something was compelling him, once again, to watch her board.

When the bus came, he started to fidget, impatiently waiting for her to withdraw her hand and for the doors to swoop open with their usual whooshing sound. She skipped on, touched a card to a yellow reader, stowed it carefully back in her pocket, and turned back to stare confused at the spot where he stood. She must have seen something that displeased her, for she frowned before boarding and climbing the stairs. It took a moment of deliberation for him to leap on behind her, and while the bus driver- strangely seated on the wrong side- opened his mouth to say something, when he walked past he closed it again, evidently dismissing it. He pulled up his dark sleeve and noticed that his glamour for invisibility was fading. He quickly scrawled a forget-me rune on his forearm, nearly overlapping the other one, and climbed up behind her. According to signs crudely graffitied on, it was not allowed for anyone to stand on the upper deck, which was what he presumed was the top part of the bus. The only seat left, he noted with no dismay whatsoever, was next to her.

Her tubes lay idly on the free seat, but as soon as she noticed his feet out of the corner of her eyes, she picked them up and deposited them safely by her other side, mumbling a sorry. She did not look up. He stood surprised for a second, basking in the revelation that this was the first time he had ever heard her say something. And to him, as well. He had often heard her sing, and while it was quiet as if she didn't want anyone to comment on it, it was still beautiful. People did comment on her singing every once in a while, and she'd mouth a thank you at them, and abruptly stop altogether. Whenever this happened, he would glare at the offender, an invisible presence forbidding them until they hurried on out of sight. Aware that he was still standing up, he seated himself fluidly and contented himself with sneaking casual glances at her.

Her stop came, far too soon- didn't it always?- and she gathered up her tubes and pressed a red button that gave a ding. There had clearly been writing on it at some stage, but now it was all worn down, marked white with incomprehensible streaks in places, and tattooed with equally incomprehensible raised patterns. Perhaps they spelt out something. Distracted, he leaned over to one side- where the seat was still warm and smelt of her- and saw, out of the window, her leap gracefully from the bus. She was kicking up leaves, tubes tucked under her arm. But there was one here, one left behind, and in a sudden burst of adrenaline, he picked up the alien cylinder and vaulted down the stairs, landing lightly on two feet. He squeezed through the doors, which were making the awful beeping sound they did whenever they closed, and stepped out into the cool, biting air. Wind blew his hair into his face. There was a moment, a brief moment where he thought he could just tap her on the shoulder, present her with the tube and walk off.

He wouldn't be able to say anything to her, though, because once words were spoken by the wearer of a forget-me rune, all memories of that person would return. But only for that one rune, not for ones before it. They would stay forgotten. And he couldn't not say something to her, not after all of this. He hadn't spoken to anyone in months. Definitely months. Not since the battle with the second Mortal Cup, where Jace had been stabbed with that heavenly sword. It had set up a ferocious light, burning away at him as well as Jace. And he hadn't felt quite as cruel, though he hadn't noticed yet. No, he didn't want her to remember him, just yet. He held the tube tight in a fist, as if it were his lifeline to her- and was it?- and followed her up and down a grey wet pavement half covered in mulch and dead leaves.

The few street lamps ahead that were on hadn't much illumination to them, and what little light they lent was filtered through the dense mass of branches atop of them. Winter had caused night to come early, and the branches to shed their green clothing, but there were a lot of evergreens lining her way as well, dropping sweet-scented needles. A few had low hanging branches, and they were both forced to duck beneath to avoid being hit in the head by them. Once, she must've forgotten, for she looked to the side as she approached, and when the branch made contact with the hood covering her hair, knocking it off, she jumped back a few steps, gasping in fright, and then laughing, albeit somewhat sheepishly. He smiled. He did that a lot lately.

She gave a sharp turn, pulled out her keys and pointed them down a smaller path, closed off by a gate that creaked and groaned angrily as she pushed it asunder. There was a wall outside her home too, a much nicer one bordered by a tree with glossy black leaves. It was strange to see a tree like this outside of Idris, but it was most certainly native, and he gave it a knowing look as he scaled the wall it was in front of. While he kept guard in front of her house, a plan started to form in his mind. He would wait until she was asleep, sneak in and leave the tube she thought she'd lost at her bed. She need never know it was him, and he could spend the night on the wall instead of his newest place. It was another house hidden in a dimension not quite there, and while it had the same basic design, this one only had two bedrooms, and a much more extensive training room.

And a dark cellar area he currently had no use for. He preferred it to the old one, as a matter of fact. But then, as he crouched silently on the damp wall, cracks filled with moss, and waited, ever-watchful, for the remaining street-lights to turn on and the sky to turn from grey to blue-black, he thought up a different plan. Another smile spread across his sharp features, shark-like and cold, and he decided that he preferred this plan to the old one as well. When the moon came up, glinting on his silvery-white hair, he found himself already planning the details. And when the stars came out and the transition from day to night was complete, he found himself already perched on her windowsill, with the lazy grace he had possessed from the moment he could walk without falling.

She didn't notice him at first, giving him ample time to renew the almost faded out forget-me rune and to survey her room. It was quite big, he could tell that easily, but the sheer mass of things crammed in distorted it a little. For starters, he would have had no idea what the colour of the walls were, coated as they were in a thick layer of poster, if not for the sizeable blank space which she was currently addressing. He watched as she picked up a small packet of something and ripped off a piece of the pale blue sheet inside, tacking it to a newly unrolled tube. The tubes turned out to be more posters, which she quickly applied to the bare area.

She made short work of the job, but there was a frown on her face as she counted over the posters that she had bought and judged the gap where another poster would just about fit. The one he held in his hand, to be specific. Seemingly out of place, a conspicuous baseball bat leant against the wall, decorated silver and red. He saw that she was still wearing the gloves, while there was no actual need for them. She still hadn't noticed him, and so he looked around again, noting this time the bright paper globes dangling from the ceiling, or the pattern of stars etched carefully around them, gradually growing more and more detailed as they reached a corner of the wall where a now familiar blue box was stationed. This one, unlike most of the others, seemed to have BAD WOLF sprayed onto its side.

It was large enough that he could see the writing on it, although it still made little sense to him. He could not understand why anyone would wish for a police call box in their room. Stretching across the length of one of the longer sides of the room was a glass bookshelf, positioned so that the posters underneath were largely visible. The books were arranged neatly, some in order of colour, others below in order of the authors' names. Her door was as colourful as the rest of the room, striped black and blue like most of her clothes. Perhaps the strangest thing was that there was a mattress on the floor when there seemed to be a perfectly functioning bed frame attached to the ceiling. At first glance he had thought that the frame was being unused because she had no way to get up to it, but there was a ladder, elegantly fashioned to look like the branches of the tree outside, with black leaves and all.

So there was no reason for her not to be using the empty bed frame, and yet the mattress was still on the floor. Actually, the bed frame was not empty, but was covered in an array of dozens of teddy-bears, all multi-coloured and coming in different shapes and sizes. As he looked on in puzzlement, she flopped down on it, burying her face in a nearby blue pillow, toying idly with the thick dark blue carpet flecked with gold. The mattress itself had been neatly spread beforehand, an image of the stars above mirrored on the sheets, and a small blue police box in the corner. She was now almost directly below him, and all it would take for her to see him was to look up, or to the side. Incidentally, she did none of these things. Instead, she reached out for a black Sharpie on her left, and a striped laptop, with a police box look-alike notebook balanced atop. She snapped up the lid to the computer, pressed keys, presumably to enter her password- FirefliesandToothpaste- onto the device, and tossed open her notebook, flipping through pages crammed with small cramped writing.

When she came to the page she desired, she turned back to the laptop, tapping away furiously, only pausing to click the touchpad a few times, turning on music. It was not a kind of music he had heard before, the type that blared through the headphones- surely there was no point at all in wearing them, if everyone could hear their music just as well as if they had gone without- of men dressed in hoodies and low-hung jeans. This went on for a while, she typing in information, and he trying to decipher it from upside-down. It intrigued him. She intrigued him. She had to have some distinguishing feature, something that marked her out as a warlock. How else had she been able to lure her to him so easily? He had to find out, she couldn’t possibly be a mundane, like he had thought. Getting closer to her would probably be dangerous, and Valentine had always said that curiosity would be his downfall. Was it the gloves? Did the gloves hide something? She looked up, once, looked as if she could see him, then looked through him, scoring one line on her right arm with the marker and turning back to to her laptop, glazed look in her eyes.

Later, she did the same thing, but made no action as if she'd seen him. He had a suspicion that she was faking it though, and so he pulled a knife from his pocket- did she just flinch?- and flung it hard, at the door behind her. Unsurprisingly, it made its mark, and she whirled around, and stood up. Her hand went out to pull out the knife- still quivering slightly-, and he smiled, safe in the knowledge that she would forget as soon as she looked away. But then she froze, gasped, and as the knife moved in the wall, her hand started shaking. The knife, lodged too firmly in the door, did not move, and she left it well alone, hand still trembling. Strange. But he ignored it, because then she did something even stranger. She looked up to the ceiling, whispered J, turned to the one she was facing, whispered A, and gradually went through three other surfaces around her, muttering letters until she spelt out JARVI. She came to the last surface, the one with the windowsill- the one where he was- but not before hesitating. She said S, looked straight at him, then through him again, scrawling strange symbols of concentric circles onto her forearm, just below the first mark, and then abruptly turning back to where the door was, gripping hold of the knife, and whispering-

'I know you're there.'

It was his turn to freeze, to tense up so hard and so quickly he nearly lost his precarious seat on the windowsill. But he said nothing, nothing at all.

'And I know what you look like,' she said, 'Tall, strange white hair, male.'

Nothing.

'Why are you on my windowsill? How did I forget you were there? What are you doing in my house?'

'About that,' he said, breaking the power of the rune, 'Why are you here all alone?'

'I'm not alone,' she said, her voice shaking.

'Your voice has betrayed you,' he said, sliding sinuously from the windowsill and silently moving towards her.

Her back still to him, she repeated, 'I'm not alone.'

'Liar,' he whispered, halfway to her.

'What do you want with me?'

Nothing. He said nothing. So she whirled round, ready to confront him, only to step back quickly when she came face-to-face with him. 'What do you want with me?'

Her knife disappeared up her sleeve in a movement so sleek he did not notice.

He ignored her question, moved lightning fast to the police box and pulled the doors open, to find it decorated strangely inside, the walls brightly detailed and hung with clothes in colour order. On the floor of the box there were seven pairs of shoes. They were all intricately patterned with images not dissimilar to those displayed on the posters hanging on her wall. In the corner, there were her wellington boots. He picked them up, and moved to scoop up some of the clothes hanging quietly. But when he turned back, he found her backing away from him, towards the centre of the room. He opened his mouth to warn her, but too late- she'd already tripped over the edge of the mattress and fallen with a plump on the quilt. Not as graceful as a Shadowhunter, definitely. He turned back, shaking his head slightly, when a movement out of the corner of his eye attracted his attention.

She was moving no longer away from him, but instead towards the bat. He released the clothes and turned to her fluidly, stalking over faster than she could move. She stilled as he neared and crouched next to her, holding out a placating hand, and then did something wholly unexpected. She thumped him hard, in the chest, and as he choked for air, she scrambled up and grabbed hold of the bat. He straightened up, stepping towards her again, hand still outstretched, when she made a devastating blow that connected solidly with his wrist. He dropped to his knees as agony seared up his arm, and the hand that had borne the weapon so furiously before went limp and fell to her side. He gave a quiet moan, and it seemed all the motive she needed to let go of the already loosely held bat altogether, moving close to him and uttering an apology. He was surprised by this, and even more so when she came opposite him, holding out her hand as if she expected him to place his injured one in hers, for her to inspect it.

Instead he reached out the other one, gripping tightly onto her with an iron grasp and pulling her, roughly, towards him. He held her in a brief embrace, the time it took for him to portal them both to his new home. She gave a yell cut short as they arrived, and he watched her take hold of the nearby counter with both hands, gasping painfully. When she looked up, taking in her newly changed surroundings, she let out a whimper, and crumpled back into him. He had forgotten that it was often painful and or sickening whenever anyone travelled via Portal, and he silently cursed himself for not giving her a warning. She must've realised what she was doing, for she soon pushed herself away from him, still leaning heavily on the counter, but with one arm that now clutched at her stomach. He moved to help her, almost instinctively, as if he was compelled- again- to protect her at all costs.

He, strangely enough, did not notice her take something else from his pocket. One of his hands- the unbroken one- came out and gently pressed against her stomach, applying the pressure he knew from first-hand experience was the only thing that ever seemed to help. But, even though it looked as if it pained her to do so, she side-stepped him, fear so strong in her eyes it burnt him. She shook her head, once, and he was torn between the urge to help her and the need to accept her wishes. Her eyes were red-rimmed, so he gently took her by the arm and led her up the glass stairs- the same as the ones in the old house- and to the second of the two bedrooms. Then he went off, leaving her for at least five minutes. When he came back with the necessary towels and such, he found that she had not moved from where he had left her. She had, concealing the knife, and the strange object, safely in a drawer and praying he did not find it. He handed the items to her, and when she looked at him in evident confusion, fear still stinging at the backs of her eyes, he said-

'Get ready for bed.'

Perhaps he had said the wrong thing, but she stiffened all over, and then nodded her head slowly, fear still growing in her eyes. Silently she accepted the towels and clothing not hers and retreated to the bathroom. He hesitated in the room, and then moved to sit on the bed, folding in on himself, head in hands. The plan, the one he'd half-formed, well, it was half-formed. And barely a plan at all. He hadn't even thought about what he was going to do after she got here. And she was here now, and she was absolutely terrified of him. He gave a sigh, and then pulled his hand away, carefully inspecting it and ignoring the twinges of pain. His stele, by some strange force of nature, had fallen from his pocket. It had to be somewhere in this house, if he could find it. He got up, moved to where the drawer where the knife was hidden, and as he was about to pull it open, he heard a siren's song.

Love, I have wounds,

Only you can mend,

You can mend.

I guess that's love,

I can't pretend,

I can't pretend.

He was stuck in place, transfixed by her voice. He had never heard her sing- not like this. A small smile stretched across his face and stayed there. He stayed there, too, hovering over the drawer that he shouldn't open, leaning slightly towards the source of the music. The source of the music stopped abruptly when it opened the door and saw him standing there. In fact, the source of the music did a sharp little intake of breath and stepped back quickly, covering their towel wrapped body with a soon shut door. There was frantic thumping before she emerged again, clad in the night-clothes he had found. Both arms were bound around her own body, tightly hugging herself to preserve her modesty. Evidently she did not appreciate the clothes he had picked out, and while he did, he considered it gentlemanly to refrain from staring.

'Get some rest. I'll be back later to check on you,' he said, and why did she look like she was going to cry? He shook his head in bewilderment, and left, softly closing the door with a click behind him. An hour later, after he'd trained for a while in the room attached to his, and then showered to rinse off the sweat, he found himself drawn to her room again. He knocked lightly, and keen practised ears picked up a startled sound and an equally startled thump. He entered almost immediately and saw a crumpled, and empty bed. She was underneath then, for a reason he couldn't understand. Carefully he knelt to her level, wishing fervently for his stele to ease his pain. A glance under the bed found both his stele- a spare one, not the one currently stored in a drawer with her newly acquired knife- and her, one closer than the other. He reached out to retrieve the stele, but it was just out of reach and he had to lean forward to reach it.

Meaning that he got closer to her, a fact he really didn't mind, except that it meant he could now clearly hear her crying. He moved back, placing the stele safely behind him and then reaching out to her like he had done before. Moving gradually nearer her with his uninjured hand, he noticed that she had nothing near to attack him with, and gained courage, taking hold of her and bringing her towards him. She was limp at first, like she wasn't quite all in her body, but when she got within clawing distance of his face, she tensed and started clawing at his face. Sharp desperate nails raked and drew beads of blood. One-handed, he pulled her out, all the while she kicked and screamed and bit and yelled and clawed like some wild animal.

When she was close enough to him, she leapt on top of him, straddling him and getting ahold of his broken wrist. And then she thrashed it against the floor repeatedly, her sobbing so raw and open it might have hurt more than what she was doing. She kept slamming it into the ground- and by the Angel, those were his bones, weren't they?- emitting a high pitched screaming and then started to ram her knees into his ribcage. The pain in his arm grew until he could not hold it in any longer, and he let out a yell. She scarcely gave him a second glance before her efforts were renewed, and he made himself bite down on his lip. His teeth sliced into the skin, and blood ran to the corner of his mouth. She kneed again, and he heard the crack of a rib and it was suddenly hard to breathe. Another blow to that area and his lungs would be pierced. He could feel more blood rising up his throat.

She gave his wrist a vicious fling to the ground and he could no longer hold back the whimper. She stopped, fury abated, breathless and tears freefalling. She looked at him again, her eyes caught by the bright blood running down his chin. A finger more gentle than he would have expected came and carefully wiped at it. She whispered another apology, her hold on him slackening enough for him to pull her off with the uninjured limb and pin her to the ground, reversing their positions entirely. An arm pinned hers to the ground. She was panting beneath him. He was out of breath too, only slightly, the wounds she’d inflicted the real reason why he was struggling to breathe. His ribs hurt, a fact not lessened by the girl managing to get free one of her arms, and thumping hard at him. He trapped them both beneath his good arm again, looking down malevolently at the struggling female.

She reminded him of a live butterfly, affixed to a board. The mental image made him smile, a vicious baring of teeth, and she flinched as far away from him as she could. Which wasn’t very far, considering that she was pressed down against the floorboards. He hadn’t seen fear like that in someone’s eyes for a long time. It filled him with a rapid excitement that built until it plummeted down into his stomach and churned up guilt he had not been sure he could feel. And then he couldn't stand it any more, rolling smoothly from her and ignoring the pain that jarring his wrist caused. She immediately rolled away from him, too soon to even notice the fast approaching bed-post until it hit her in the side. She choked, breath knocked out of her, and he took the opportunity to get closer to her again. It was then that he learnt she was a great actor when she shivered and cowered in fear, looking down as one would when they were terrified, up until the point where she punched him in the face, really rather hard. He swore and tackled her again, pushing her flailing body hard against the floor.

Her head thumped back, and her eyes glazed over for a second before she sagged down a little, evidently having given up on fighting. Again, he secured her body, making sure that there was no way she could free herself, and leant to his right to retrieve the stele. It had moved a little during their scuffle, but was still, fortunately, within reach. Blood dripped down from a stinging scratch on his face, and he remembered the stele by his side, and lifted it to carve an iratze above his damaged wrist. Before he could do so, however, she gave another gasp, and he looked up again to see her trying to scoot across away from him. Although instead of staring at him in fear, this time, she was instead fixated on the stele- that was what she’d taken from him, wasn’t it? But it couldn’t be, because for him to find it would mean that he had also found her knife. And there was no way he’d be so forgiving if he’d found it- in his hand, which, in retrospect, looked rather like a wickedly thin knife.

He shook his head wordlessly, but did not hold it out to her because it was a weapon and she was dangerous. And because he didn’t know what she was yet. He put it down, tried to soothe her because he had no idea what else to do, and then quickly gave up. He snatched the stele up and sketched out a quick iratze rune on his forearm, making a quiet groan as the bones in his hand cracked and writhed beneath the skin, fusing themselves back together. She looked more than a little shocked by this, somehow writhing free, only to pull his arm close and flick her gaze over the rune and the wound, looking back up at him in evident surprise.

It looked like she was committing it to memory, something very unlikely. Once she’d done that, she moved on to the forget-me rune, the one that was fast fading as its power dissipated. He took the opportunity of her distraction to get up, pulling her up too. Anger quickly rose in his chest, unexpected and sudden, nearly throwing him off balance. She had, after all, attacked him. And there was plenty space in the cellar. At first she refused to come, but he was far too furious to take no for an answer, far too vexed to listen to logic, far too aggrieved to be gentle. He grabbed her hair, her bright red hair, and pulled hard till she whimpered and followed him without fighting. That was good.

There was something that felt inherently wrong when he had to fight her. She went, in perfect silence, back downstairs, though he noticed her glancing wildly around as if she expected to use the knowledge to escape somehow. But as soon as she reached the cellar door, as soon as he wrenched it open on hinges that squeaked and groaned, she started fighting again. It wasn’t hard to subdue her. He was a Shadowhunter, trained almost from birth to be the best and the fastest and she was a mundane. Presumably, any way. He’d look under her gloves later. And once he had the time- once he’d sorted out the… business left over from his last exploit with the Infernal Cup- he’d check out her full body. Make sure she wasn’t hiding any secrets that he ought to know. He ignored the fact that he had no right to know anything, that he was the one who had forced her here, and dragged her bodily down the stairs.

There were chains attached to the furthest corner of the wall, and that was where he brought her. Her eyesight was not as good as his, but it did not take long for her eyes to adjust and she soon started yelling again, clawing at him and trying to get away from the chain. It was futile, and she only ended up exhausted and sore of throat. And, of course, tethered to the cold stone wall. Hoarse sobbing followed him up the stairs and plagued his sleep that night. He didn’t visit her until three days later, and by that time she had started whispering about someone called Carlos who was, apparently, a scientist. It was the only information he could get from her, even though he had offered food, something she must’ve sorely yearned for. He noticed a deep and bleeding bite mark on her upper arm, self-inflicted, and blood smeared on her face. It sickened him, though he’d seen worse, and he soon returned upstairs.

He came back the next day, after sorting out a few demons slavering for his downfall after his latest betrayal, with a plate of food and a glass of liquid he had stolen- he could have paid, but preferred not to- and placed it within her grasp. He returned before he went out the day after, to find the food had not been touched, and though the glass was empty, it was also knocked over, and its contents lay spilt around it. He decided that there was no need for him to leave the house that day, and instead crouched to her side, commanding her to eat. The only movement she performed- other than the arrhythmic rise and fall of her chest- was when she turned her head slowly, and somewhat menacingly, to the side. She glared at him until he physically inched away from her, although he had no reason to, considering she had no feasible way to touch him, let alone harm him. He tried to urge her to eat, but when she clamped her jaw shut in a universal gesture for no, he grabbed her face and twisted her head round to face him again. Pinched her nose shut until she had to open her mouth to breathe, and shovelled food in until it was all gone. He left her choking and crying. She did not break easily, but eventually, on the second week of her being in the cellar, she opened her mouth of her own accord and allowed him, mutely, to feed her. Her hands were now chained to her side and trembling violently.

He tried to take her gloves from her hands that day- believing she had been placated enough to be called tame- but she snarled, feral at him, and he returned to the light without another word. He came each day until she was used to it, ceased to struggle, and then stopped coming so that she would crave his presence. She knew what was happening to her, knew it was illogical, but found herself no longer wanting to fight it any more. Her stomach started to burn with hunger, and when he came, when he finally came, she nearly wept. He could not see the glistening tracks on her streaked face because there was not enough light. He had tried to feed her the usual amount but she could not- could not take it all in- and when she vomited it down her front, he had made a disgusted sound. She wondered if he knew that she relieved herself where she sat and could no longer find the energy to care any more. He stood up, light shining on his heavenly silver white halo of hair, dusted his hands on his jeans- as if to rid himself of traces of her- and left again, closing the door. She forgot about light until the next day when he came and fed her again. She hated him. Her wrists had begun to grow numb, and in the weak light that filtered in each feeding time, she saw that they were pale and bruised. The cold from the oppressive grey slate walls had long since oozed into her clothing, and she often shook so hard she imagined her brain rattling around in her head. A harsh cough racked her body, and she hacked and wheezed until he came down and stared at her. When he returned upstairs, she noticed a horrible smell.

It was of her, and was a smell she knew rather too personally. She sighed, wriggled and contorted her body- chains clanking horribly- until she could get one hand, sore and stretched, to between her legs. She wiped, and her fingers came up smeared with something that was unmistakably red, even in the poor light. Her hands were wiped on her body- not that that made them that much cleaner- and she rested them back on her lap, closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on a memory of a time where she was not in distracting pain. The memory- like water and fine silk- slipped away, as if between the fingers of her mind, and a warm tear ran down her face. It was irritating to say the least, spreading awareness of that part of her body, and how much she craved to wipe it away. How much she just wanted to be rid of her shackles and safe in bed.

Her lower back was aching again. She hadn’t noticed it because of all of the other, more significant problems she was having, but it was growing ever apparent as the stench from her body rose. Her stomach curled around itself, knotting tightly, and she gritted her teeth through the night and through the cramps. She did not sleep. No more blood came, just the flaky remnants of the night before. It was two weeks later, when he- after feeding her her lot for the day- had tried to leave the house. But, instead of the city where he had expected it to go, there was a familiar destination waiting for him once he’d opened the door. His wall. He stormed back inside, pulled back the door to where she was kept- and distinctly heard her faint and piteous whimpers.

His rage dissipated unexpectedly, and he unconsciously lifted a hand to his temple. His sudden mood changes around her were startling, even to him. It was not the first time that he theorised that she had a power to affect the moods of others. In fact, right now he felt a sudden urge of compassion towards her. Aldo not the first time. But he had never felt that way towards anyone else, so perhaps his emotion manipulating belief was well founded. He pulled out a witchlight from his pocket, visibly wincing when he properly saw the state she was in, her hair lank and her back hunched. A part of him reasoned that it could not be her, not her, so weakened, who had managed to take control of his home, that he must’ve done it unwittingly, from thinking about her so often. So he returned the witchlight to his pocket, concentrated hard, and when he next opened the door, found it led exactly to where he needed it.

Although it happened again the next day, and the day after that, and the next day after that, and after that day, the same thing. Her period did not return while she was down there, and she accredited it to malnutrition. He had been giving her the same amount of food he always had- if less often- but she had been unable to find the energy to consume it any more. He had evidently given up force feeding her, for which she was grateful, instead placing food at her lips, and if she did not open her mouth to take it in, he simply returned the food to the plate and went back upstairs. Upstairs now seemed a far away land, impossible and defying logic, far out of her reach. Sometimes she dropped asleep, sometimes she stayed up and imagined wild animals tearing him to shreds, wolves howling and baring blood red fangs that would not harm her. She only slept when it was necessary, when she either could not force her eyelids apart any longer, or when the hallucinations became too real and she shrunk back from her own imagination.

The latter happened far more often- worryingly- than the former. Once she had imagined- for it could not be true, could it?- the boy, her captor, taking a wet cloth and wiping gently at her face and hair. She had imagined him cleaning her all over- even the intimate parts that only she’d ever seen- and stroking her now clean hair. She had imagined him apologising softly and kissing her forehead. But it could not be true, because he had come in later that day- she was sure it was a day- roughly forcing her head back and trying to rip off her red gloves. She had bitten him, tasted sweet bitter blood- oh, the juxtapositions of life!- and kept jaws clamped shut until he smashed her head against the wall behind her, and she let go, dazed and weaker than before. It could not be real, no matter how clean she felt now. And it could not be real, even though she could not smell herself any more. She had gotten used to the foul odour, that was all. And she had imagined it, she must’ve done. She closed her eyes and wondered if death would hurt now. She could scarcely move now. He had unchained her once, believing her too weak to fight any more, but it had only taken an hour for her to prove him wrong, pelting him with her own faeces when he came bearing food. She had unerring accuracy, and it was only his impossible speed that saved him getting it in places he’d rather not. After that, he’d punished her, locked the door tight in a fuming rage and she hadn’t eaten in so long. She told herself that the average human being could not survive over a week without food, told herself that logically, it had to be only four days since she last ate, but logic had never stopped her stomach from roiling in agony and did not start then.

She forced herself up, no longer chained but so much weaker than she remembered, gripped onto the suspiciously slimy wall through the rush of blood to her head, and screamed when something- pleasebewaterpleasebewaterpleasebewater- dripped onto her face. She didn’t stop screaming until she was halfway up the stairs, did not stop until she passed out, clinging to the railings and trying to remember what breathing was. He found her like that two days later, in the exact same position, and when she next awoke, she was being chained to the wall again. She did not make it easy for him, writhing and biting and headbutting and screaming in his air until she felt blood at the back of her throat. She had known that it would only delay the process a little, had known that it could only incite his fury, but had no longer given a single flying profanity. Eventually, she had only stopped when he slammed her back against the wall again. It seemed that it was his go-to method for controlling her, which made logical sense, considering the fact that it always worked.

He came back with her food not ten minutes later, but she found she was laughing too hard at the memory of throwing her own defecation at him to want to eat, despite how hunger gnawed at her insides. This, of course, angered him, and he cracked her skull against the wall again. She was still laughing, though, still laughing when he wrenched her jaws apart and crammed tasteless food into her mouth. She was laughing as it made its way down her oesophagus, and then she was laughing as the food went the wrong way, and she was laughing as she ended up vomiting on him. She laughed as he got up and walked, painfully tense, out of the room, and she was laughing when he locked the door and shut out her light. She laughed until she cried, and wept until she thought she was going to die. It was a familiar thought to her, that, and the thought that she was finally going mad. It was slower than she thought it would be.

He didn’t return for about three days, but she once she saw him again she was laughing too hard to care. She didn’t stop laughing when his hand cracked across her face and she slumped back against the wall. She could not stop laughing as blood ran down her face, or even as she choked for breath. She had entered hysteria and had little intention of returning to sanity. She stopped laughing when he tried to take off her gloves. She started growling instead, voice too far depleted to do anything much else. It was more than enough. He looked at her, startled, and she pulled her lips back in a bloodied snarl, and started reciting. Her voice was rough and scratched from disuse and misuse, but as she struggled through, it became clearer, sliding into the lilting fashion she used to speak to very small children. Her captor seemed entranced by her words, and while she was still unsure of his motives, it had to be a good thing, right? He sat crouched, as she worked her way through all of the poems she had ever read- eidetic memory- and when she started reciting speeches, famous speeches, about freedom and integrity, he covered her mouth and nose with a hand that was larger than hers and finely calloused. She could not breathe, but did not struggle. It got her nowhere, she knew that. He took the hand away and she continued- I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their cha- He thumped her in the stomach, and she was winded, coughed and then could not continue. He smiled and left again.

She could not remember what happened after that, a hazy blur of nothing at all, but she knew she had been fed because she no longer hungered for anything but freedom. She did not sleep, but hallucinated again. She was sure, because in her imaginings, cool fingers pushed her hair back and pressed a cold thing to her mouth. She drank, and drank, until she was filled. Until she sighed, and leaned towards the comforting presence, eyes tight closed and imagining. Her body was not yet used to such an intake of rich liquid, and she turned her head to the side and was sick all down her front. She started crying, and the bright light in her periphery disappeared and came back later, like the slow blink of a tired person. The presence was there again, and, like last time, she imagined someone wiping the mess from her, shushing her protests until she fell into what could only be termed a peaceful slumber. But then she woke up and everything was the same again, and she was still chained up in some basement somewhere. She did not know it, but the house had still been dragged to her old home, over and over again, each day. Once, he had taken the initiative, and gone to her place. He had entered the same way as before, through the window, and found it all as untouched as he had left it. There was a fine layer of dust over everything, and her laptop, which had been open and on when she had been taken, was still open, but the screen had gone blank, and when he tapped it, he was asked for a password.

He still remembered it clearly, and pressed in the keys uncertainly, relieved when it let him in. There was nothing, nothing at all, that indicated to him that she was anything but a mundie, even though he’d searched through everything. He went through her clothing and her book shelf, moved corners of posters to check beneath, and found absolutely nothing. It didn’t make sense. She didn’t make sense. He left money on the table- plenty of it, in case the owner came looking for his rent. And a note, just in case the purpose of the cash was misunderstood. Eventually realising the search to be entirely futile, he returned to the daily- sometimes, if he felt like it- routine of feeding her, and found her being as obstreperous as ever. He could not understand her. Could not understand why she hadn’t broken yet, hadn’t shattered yet. He didn’t know that sometimes she cried herself to sleep, that what he saw was an elegantly schooled mask built up from years of ignoring taunts. She had long since distanced herself from her surroundings. Like that story she had read in the life where she wasn’t here. The Princess Bride. She loved that book. And the film. Knew both word for word, but she knew most things she’d read word for word. She was in her mind now, and nothing could hurt her. But sometimes the cold seeped into her tired bones and she’d wake up from a dream with chocolate frogs and non-existent platforms, and she’d cry until she forgot her name. In the dark she’d sound it out, and find words no longer came easily to her. Nyssa, she’d say, My name is Nyssalie Caeira Sable. And I- and then she’d stop because maybe that was all she knew and a life outside of here did not exist.

Lately she had found herself fixated on a point of her life, running it over in her mind and playing it from different angles. Something was missing, she knew that but could not find it. She was in her room, her old room, and her mother was downstairs, she could hear her. She was on her bed, and the window was open. Her snowglobe was on the floor, knocked off her dresser, the one under her window. She could hear music, music she used to love, and a wave of nostalgia hit her and she woke up from the memory and threw up. Maybe it had been nausea. She remembered- of course she did, never forgot- reading an article disputing the existence of a true eidetic memory, remembered it being the first time she had ever heard that word and found out as much about it as she could. Her favourite piece on it had been a man who imagined the memories on a piece of paper and set fire to it in his mind to forget.

She couldn’t do that, she could only make things harder to remember. She liked to imagine that she had a timeline immensely detailed in a really thick pencil, and a really rubbish rubber, and so she had to be really careful and try really hard, so that there was only a faint imprint of what was left. And then she would leave a red dot on the day she did the rubbing out, lest she forgot. But she wouldn’t. She had done this several times with books she had hated and could not wait to forget and with books she loved and could not wait to read again. Today she would consult her timeline, see how much was left, and found, to her horror, that most of her ordeal had been erased already. She could not remember doing this, could see no red dot marking a memory poorly erased and started to cry because she was losing her mind

It had taken long enough. There was a happy place, deep inside her mind, where she hadn’t visited for years. Hadn’t been since her mother’s last relapse. Her mother was fine now. She wished she was. She retreated to that happy place, where the sky was unnaturally blue and clouds painfully white. In her mind, she edited it, toning the picture down from a child’s perception of the world to what reality was. Her reality of course. There had been a lot of thinking before this particular decision. In her happy place, she was a god. And sometimes it had scared her. No-one lived there, just her and the harmless animals that lurked just out of sight, always there because you could hear them playing. And sometimes she didn’t want to leave. Not leaving was bad. But it had to be better than where she was now. In her happy place, she lay on soft green- too green, she’d fix that later- grass and closed her eyes and opened them and then the meadow was gone. And in its place was a lake. She had always wanted to visit a lake, a proper one, with fishes and trees around the edges and water that was clear enough to see right through but reflected the sky above like nobody’s business. She closed her eyes, and in her happy place, sung herself to sleep. It was nice here. The false sun lent a golden glow to her skin.

He found her, a few hours later- feeding time- still in her happy place, eyes open but neither blinking nor seeing, and muttering about pencils and rubbers. She didn’t wake up when he cleared his throat, or tapped her, or hit her. She didn’t respond to the smell of food, though it had very little smell in the first place, and she didn’t seem to notice when he covered her mouth and nose, restricting breath. He left her, food within reach, and went back to her home. The money left on the desk was gone, as was the note. And another brief search through the documents on her computer revealed that her name was Nyssa. Encouraged by the fact that he had not found her name the first time around, he went through everything in her room again. He used runes to see through stuffed animals, tapped at the posters to see if the wall behind was hollow, and patted down the clothing hanging resentfully untouched in the strange blue box. Nothing. He individually took out each book in her bookshelf, moved everything around and back again, and was about to give up when he spied two large black boxes behind her shoes. He rifled through the contents of the largest, which were mostly sheets of paper from different organisations expressing their condolences to her. He recognised two of them as publishing companies run as a front by Shadowhunters. Still unsure of who she was, he kept searching through the first box, painstakingly reading each letter. The streetlights had come on by the time he was finished. And there was absolutely nothing at all incriminating about her.

The matter of the Shadowhunters was shady, to be sure, but no further evidence of her being anything but perfectly normal existed. The smallest of the boxes was filled with photos and drawings and more sheets of paper that seemed to be telling a story. Most of the photographs featured her as well as a boy about his age, blond like Jace, with startling blue eyes, and a trusting smile. If anything went wrong, if, for instance, she escaped- though he prayed to the angel that that would never happen- then he could use him as leverage. He had found that blackmail worked a treat. In her happy place, she opened her eyes again- and the sun did not cause her to squint, she would fix that as well- and turned her head to the side. She was holding someone’s hand. He called her name, once twice. It sounded wrong, like it was not his. She knew his voice. She knew the face, really well. Like her own face. But as she struggled to find the name that the face belonged to, he changed into her captor. She blinked and was back in her cell, cold and tired and hungry and wet and lonely. Despite the man- boy, teenager?- who was imprisoning her standing over her, she was lonely again. She hated loneliness.

With venom she didn’t know she still had in her, she spat out a warning to stay away from her happy place, lest she shattered his arm. He had looked taken aback, but then had laughed in her face. She hated ridicule as well. So she snatched out a hand, one that looked startlingly frail, took hold of his forearm, despite the strain it caused the weak skin, and twisted it back sharply until he gave a pained gasp. When she released him, too exhausted to prove her point further, he glared at her and took the food tray away. She wasn’t hungry anyway. Nyssa was getting good at lying to herself. The next day, she found that her timeline had been redrawn in a much finer pencil, just as detailed as she barely remembered. She also found that it had been well over a month since her last period. Nothing happened but a vindictive pain unfurling in her stomach. The days stopped mattering after that. Everything did. She discovered the doors to her own happy place sealed against her, noticed an incessant dripping that soon sickened her, and realised she had lost the ability to speak now. She wondered how much food her body was absorbing. Not enough because her hands hadn’t stopped shaking in a while. He had given up on feeding her now, and she decided that he intended her to die.

That would be nice, wouldn’t it?


	2. Brittle twigs clothed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our heroine is still in captivity. For a while, at least.

It was maybe the third month of her enforced stay- she called it captivity when she spoke to him, which was rare enough- that he decided on a different approach. He descended the stairs to the cellar where she was being held, harsh white witchlight illuminating the dank surroundings and guiding him to where she was huddled, pressed up against the wall in a dark corner, festering in her own mess. He was as sure about taking her up to the spare bedroom as he was about taking her from her home in the first place, but to him, it felt there was no other alternative. At first he had thrown her in the cellar for a number of reasons. Mainly because she was dangerous, with or without a weapon, but also because he had no idea what to do with her, a fact he was reminded of every time he saw fear in her eyes.

He detested that fact, and he loathed that fear. So she was in the cellar. But now he was bringing her out, not simply out of the kindness of his heart- he didn't have one, after all- but because the compulsion he'd had to bring her here in the first place had returned. It grew stronger, day by day, until sometimes he could not sleep, haunted by dark dreams and flashes of scarlet hair and gloves. He took a step towards her, she shrank back as if she could make herself smaller. It took one fluid movement to kneel beside her and loose her from her bonds. She murmured under her breath as if she was in great pain and so he rubbed her wrists with his hands, gently touching her hair before preparing to pull her up. And again, she surprised him with her strength, physically throwing herself on him and jarring his body painfully. His head hit the floor with an audible crack, and while she hesitated, she did not stop. Though her nails were greatly worn down since the last time they had had a physical encounter- a quarter of a year ago- they were ragged and sharp and sliced at his skin mercilessly.

He did not blame her for this, even as warm blood ran sideways across his face. But he did, however, try to stop her, and for his troubles, he ended up having both his arms- right where the shoulder started- hit very hard so that they went dead. When it was apparent that he could not feel them any more, she smiled, evidently satisfied. Again, she tried the same tactics as she had before, knocking his head back against stone until there was more blood, crashing her knees into his torso over and over, and kneeing him in the manlies. After that, she resorted to pressing her elbow hard against his windpipe, short vicious jabs that hurt more than he had thought they could. At some stage, he was relatively sure that she had been trying to gouge his eyes out. Sense slowly returned to his arms, but when he put them on her shoulders to lift them up, she gave a little scream and began to cry hysterically.

He could feel her heaving for breath between broken off sobs, and eventually she simply rolled away from him and into a tight ball, choking on the hot tears that trailed her face. He gave a brief sigh of resignation, pulled her up- not as hard as he had done before, by the arm, not the hair- and led her, silently, upstairs. She stood dazed for a moment, blinking and rubbing at her face with hands that were slathered in who-knows-what. The action left a streak of grime on her otherwise clean face. He had made a point of cleaning it during one of her many fits of unconsciousness. Sometimes they worried him. Her pupils dilated, and she took in the layout of the room as if she intended to escape. He smiled at her, if only for her determined spirit, but he had not expected the look of terror that crossed her features to happen, not at all.

But at least he knew why, which did not make it any less disturbing to him. She still wore her scarlet gloves, was still clad in the same clothes he had found her in, though they smelt something awful and hung from her frame loosely. She hadn’t eaten much while she’d been in that place. Her hair hung, torn and pasted together with whatever foul substances lurked down there. It had grown significantly, but was so much thinner that it didn’t really count. Parts were plastered to her scalp, or stuck out at randomly. She had patches missing and it was uneven. He would have to cut it off, he resolved, and continued to assess the damage done. She was stained in grime, and, he noticed with some distaste, her own muck. He pulled a face.

But he really had no one to blame but himself. He had put her in there with no toilet or bathroom, chained to the wall so she could only stay where he’d put her. The cellar had originally been only for the most savage of demons and for summoning the greater types, but she seemed to have adapted well enough. He looked over to her and immediately reprieved his earlier thought. It had definitely broken her, and some secluded part of him felt sad over that. The rest of him watched in blatant curiosity as she stood and shook, looking wild eyed and raw. Her lips formed words that read the horrors, the horrors, and the secluded part winced and wondered if he could not put her together again. He stepped over to where she stood- and really, did she have to flinch like that? he’d only locked her up for a few months- and she drew back, curling up somehow, whilst still standing. It was the first independent movement she’d made since he’d brought her back upstairs. Mostly, she just stood and blinked in light.

He had quickly attributed unusual glimmering in her eyes to them struggling to cope with the influx of brightness, and not tears. It was more for the sake of his ease than anything else. Her scarlet gloves were caked in filth, but she held her hands close to her chest like they were precious to her. Or, more likely, concealed a precious secret. He came closer and took one of her hands, noticed the broken nails like she had been clawing at something hard, and the spots of nail varnish nearly all gnawed off. She would have had to bend over double to get her hands to her mouth. He flipped her hands over, traced dark flexion lines on her fingers edged with something damp, and brought her hand closer to his body. She gasped again, and there it was, the feral burn in her eyes replaced by a slow build up of terror. He cupped her face in his hands and watched in abstract horror as she began to cry. He murmured words intended to be soothing, but she only sobbed harder, trying to lift her hands to cover her tear-streaked face. He would take off her gloves later, but for now, he would focus on calming her down. She sank halfway down, and he found himself supporting her almost limp body. They stayed like that for a good ten minutes or so, while her crying grew more and more desperate. She sniffed, sat on the floor, contorted into a twisted foetal position and scrubbed furiously at her face, as if to remove all evidence of her breakdown.

When she had calmed herself down enough, she looked up and he reached towards her again. She descended back into hysterics, scrabbling to get away from him until her back hit the wall. There wasn't anything he could say to her to calm her down, but he still opened his mouth to talk. Her eyes were saucer wide and still brimming with tears yet unshed. Words left his mouth of their own accord, dangling uselessly in the thin air until they suffocated and fell, feeble, to the ground. It was evident that this method was not working. Behind her, a cleverly disguised sleight of hand etched the rune to call up a doppelgänger and a door encircled in unnatural blue opened up. She was not facing it, but turned in time to see a second him step out and the door fade. She looked alarmed, glancing back and forth between the two, and, he was glad to see, move slightly closer to him.

The original him, and not the hastily conjured doppelgänger. Sebastian, for that was who he was, made a face of surprise. It was as false as the other him was. ‘What is she doing up here?’ the doppelgänger said- not shouted, never shouted, there was no power in those who raised their voices above others- and Sebastian noticed her flinch and moved to comfort her. She flinched away from him as well. The doppelgänger stepped closer, as threateningly as it could- which was incredibly so- and launched the carefully planned attack, coming at her with fists and threats. She shrank back, terrified, arms up to protect herself and already braced, but as he was about to make physical contact with her, Sebastian grabbed hold of his arm and the two started fighting. It was staged, of course, and doppelgängerSebastian ended up giving an exposition about treating her with cruelty and then ended up "unconscious".

Sebastian slung his doppelgänger over his shoulder- didn’t it mean death to see your gänger?- and disappeared through the door leading out of the house. As soon as he left the heavily runed boundaries, the weight of the gänger lessened until it was gone altogether. He returned to find her still where he had left her, and spun some cottony story about a twin brother with a strange obsession with her. He had told her that Jonathan- he was no longer to be called that now, he was Sebastian- was not dead, merely unconscious, and that she would be safer from him if she stayed. He said that he could protect her, that his brother could not harm her if she stayed. She nodded, only too eager to believe him, and then, to his utmost horror, broke down into tears. He wasglad he had chosen to play out this story now rather than later. It sounded shallow and ill thought out even to his own ears, and it was probably only her poor state of mind that had saved him thus far.

In a foolish, and frankly misguided, attempt to calm her, to soothe her and to show an expression of trust, he wrapped his arms around her slender waist and hugged her. That was the moment it all went to hell. Before he could even react to what was happening, she had stiffened and rolled over, efficiently trapping him beneath her despite her greatly diminished strength. From his pocket she drew the spare stele, and drove it into his side. He gasped in pain, and she wasn't fighting any more, just sobbing and flailing to get free. She stopped for a moment when she saw vivid vermillion staining her fingers a dark wet red. And then she started again, even if her onslaught was weaker than before. It was almost incredible, how persistent she was at her assaults. Surely she had realised by now that he was much stronger than her? One of his hands came up and wrapped around both her wrists- more thin than he remembered, like brittle twigs clothed in fragile skin- and she stopped struggling almost instantly, curled up tight, and let him draw her into his arms. And, by extension, his lap.

He pulled out the stele from his side planning on mending his injuries quickly, so as to not look quite so terrifying. A wipe down his jeans cleaned off most of the blood, the seraphic material glowing dully underneath. And then held it out to her, tip-first, to prove that it was utterly harmless. He paid little attention to the fact that, in the wrong hands, it could be potentially fatal. Clary's hands, for instance. His grip tightened around the slender stele, but he soon let go of it, proffering it to her. She took it, cautiously, and inspected it curiously, giving it a few experimental waves before handing it back. He started to laugh at that- though his sides hurt almost more than he could understand and it was all he could do not to cry out- gently reminding her that they were not wands. She rolled her eyes, but as he was going to put the stele to bruised skin- she fought hard and vicious- she stuck out her hand again. He gave her a tired smile, but she must have mistaken it for something more dangerous because she retracted her hand, and look, fear. Again. He passed it to her with a conscious effort at giving a kind smile, but rightly assumed it was more wolf-like when she winced away. He stopped at once.

With a defiant look on her features- had she ever been anything but?- she waved the stele violently around, and then, completely shocked him by putting the stele to her skin. And, by the Angel, she'd already half-done the forget-me rune before he could lunge towards her and snatch it away. It would take longer for her to turn into a Forsaken with a half-completed rune, he knew that, but it would happen, and the only alternative was something he had never wanted to force upon her. He had no choice now. He had to get her to drink from the Mortal Cup. There wasn't much chance of her surviving it, and he couldn't even be sure because there wasn't enough time for testing. Two days was all he had. The Infernal Cup was downstairs, fortunately, but he still needed the blood of a Shadowhunter. His was too risky. What if she turned out to be a monster like him? He sent her to bed promptly making sure to take the stele from her, and telling her to sleep well. He checked in on her ten minutes later, before he left, found her fast asleep and couldn't resist placing a kiss on her hair. She rolled away from him and he half-wondered if she was sleeping after all. There was a piece of paper in his pocket- he heard the rustle when he stood, and so he pulled it out, hastily scribbling a message to her. Be careful, it said, there is food in the fridge and you are welcome to wander around. When you wake up, I'll be gone- don't worry if I'm not back immediately, but I will get back to you within two days. At the end, he hesitated, unsure as what to sign it, and so left it well-alone. The note was left by the bedside table, and he went to get some blood.

The first day for him consisted of tracking Jace and Clary down and steadily dismantling protective measures around the two. It was broken up by long spats of worrying about her. It was easier than expected, especially since they seemed to be centred in one place. For her it mainly consisted of trying to fall asleep and wandering, lost about her new- though she detested the word- home. She was constantly plagued by a burning itching that meant she could not sit still. Her skin was scratched sore and bleeding within the hour of her awakening. Nor could she eat anything. Not that she would have risked it, in the unfamiliar place where she was essentially being held a captive. At the end of the first day, she was racked with shivering and brief moments where she might have been hallucinating. Somehow, she found herself in his room, wrapped tight in his blankets, her muscles more or less paralysed. Exhaustion forced her body to shut down. At the end of the first day, he was sitting cold on a the roof of the Institute, using a rune to see through to the lovers beneath. He dismissed the strange glow coming from Jace as delusions- he was simply worried, because she was dying and it was his fault and why would Jace be glowing golden anyway?

It wouldn't take long for them to fall asleep, and then he could take the blood as peacefully as possible. Nothing ever went to plan. The second day for him was awful. He had spent the entirety of the night fretting over his house guest- if that was the word to use- and waiting, impatiently, for the pair below to cease their inane talking and go to sleep. In fact, he had been waiting for most of the second day, as well. And they were still awake. It would have been easier for everyone involved if it were otherwise, but it just wasn't going to happen. The second day for her was worse. She felt trapped inside her own body, a pounding headache fingers that wouldn't work could not alleviate. Her body shut down again three hours after initially awakening. She dreamt of fire. Eventually, he gave up, swooping in through the window and scratching a silencing rune onto the door before a wearied Clary could even react. Jace was halfway out of bed when his legs gave out and he fell. He wasn't sure why he did, but again, faster than Clary, he lifted Jace up and dropped him back in bed, muttering something witty and amicable about swooning damsels in distress. Both glared at him. There was, evidently, no point in delaying any further, and he brandished a knife.

'I require your blood,' he said, before either could even start to say something.

Clary's was simple to take, a quick dart forwards, a slash, and a skilled scoop. Even her newly trained Shadowhunter skills were of little use against his superior speed. The Infernal Cup had already begun to change its alliance, gradually shifting to look more like its angelic cousin. It wouldn't be enough, he had known that, and so he needed Jace's too. A normal Shadowhunter's blood would have just curdled and gone a viscous black. But Jace was a wild card. Jace had always been difficult, and today was no exception. He had seized a knife from Clary's belt and flung it at him. It was easily sidestepped, but he was quickly reminded of his unhealed injuries as the sharp pang in his side alerted him of its presence. He successfully concealed it with a blood-coated smirk, and drew a rune on the wall behind him, summoning up an image of her. He heard gasps behind him, realised the stupidity of having his back to those who wished to... dispose of him, and promptly turned back. While he still had the stele out, he carved an iratze rune onto his arm, almost instantly feeling his purpled skin fading back and the one of his ribs breaking and sealing itself together. He had thought of doing it up on the roof but there was always the chance of at least one of his limbs seizing up, a thing not particularly desired when someone who was attached to their existence was atop a high building. He sighed in relief, and ignored the glares they were giving him.

'Who is she?' Clary asked, not taking her eyes from him for a second- not even to look at the image he'd made. He didn't blame her for it, although he noticed how Jace had pulled Clary closer in an attempt to protect her. A smile danced around his lips at how ridiculous he was being- after all, he could not even leave the bed without requiring assistance to get back in again- but it quickly faded when he remembered the gravity of the situation. They could not know who she was, so being purposely vague would have to do.

'A mundane. With a rune for forgetting half cut into her arm.' Jace looked absolutely horrified, Clary more so. 'These runes on my body- they mean I'm still bound by the Angel to keep an oath. So if I swear to only use your blood to change the alliance of this Cup and to turn her into a Shadowhunter, will you let me have it?' It only took a few more promises he couldn't make himself regret for him to have a Cup of both's blood shimmering inside. He disappeared soon after. They didn't receive thanks, although they hadn't expected it. Nor had they expected him to bargain with them, but nothing was ever what it seemed with him. When he left, the image of the almost fatally curious girl disappeared too. Clary, also overcome with curiosity, stepped up quickly, leaving Jace's side for what was the first time in a long while, and taking out her own stele. No runes came to mind. Nothing at all, not even the faintest flicker to call back an image weak and fleeting. No grainy footage, nothing. No ideas whatsoever. And even if she had been able to think up something, to summon up the strange, sick girl once again, would she have?

Would it be right to spy on the both of them like that, no matter how much she detested the white haired boy? She might have, if only for answering the questions his arrival had brought and then left behind. Why was an enemy of theirs asking for their aid? And why had he been so willing to give his word? For the girl? Was he lying about everything? Clary started to doubt whether or not the girl was even turning into a Forsaken. He had most likely just wanted her to become another Shadowhunter. But if he was telling the truth, which she doubted, then he truly cared about the girl, which Clary doubted even further, knowing her brother. And, following that vein of thought, surely it was sensible to tell someone you cared about the dangers of runing themselves. This shouldn't have happened at all. The girl must have known, and in that case, must have known of the repercussions. And so had wanted this to happen. But why? Had she been trying to escape from him? And if she didn't know, why not? Had they only just met? Then why had she been in his house? It was all speculation and doubt. That was what Clary had told Jace, any how.

When he got back, tired, drained but as determined as ever, he rushed almost immediately to her room, Cup held firm and aloft in his hand. But she wasn't in there, and he stopped, pulled up short and tried to remember the most humane way to dispose of a Forsaken. He must have been too late. The last stage of changing meant you could not move, and so if she had been in her room before, for her to have left she would have had to have been no longer human. He bit his lip, drew hot blood again. It tasted foul. He pulled out his blade, held it close to him in his fighting hand, transferred the Cup and blamed himself entirely. But. She would have only been in here if she had frozen up in here in the first place. In a burst of what could only be described as hope, he ran to his room. She lay, deathly pallid, on his crumpled sheets. Was she dead? There was always a chance of even the changing going wrong, and her paralysis causing her body to give up altogether. But no, she was breathing, although barely. He sagged in relief, took hold of her hand- worryingly cold- and squeezed it gently. He felt his chest constrict. She started shivering, and all the blankets she had had wrapped around her made no difference at all. He stripped to his waist and climbed in beside her, cradling her in his arms. It was a strange thing for him to do, and at the same time it felt unfamiliar, it felt just about perfect. She gave a soft moan, one that sent a stab of sorrow through him, and nestled snugly into him. He held her tighter. It was a moment, cruelly cut short, where everything was fine, and then she stiffened up and tried to roll away. She was awake then. He sighed into her hair, and she pulled at him again, nearly toppling off the bed. He caught her by the arm, and pulled her close into him. A relief of the kind he had never before felt flooded through him.

'Hey,' he said, rubbing slow up and down her arm, 'It's okay.' She sniffed. 'Drink this,' he offered, passing the Cup over and pressing it to her lips. She shook her head and he frowned. It wasn't hard to tell that she wouldn't listen to wheedling, or begging. Bribery wouldn't work either. He steeled himself, pushed it hard against her mouth and covered her nose, repeating to her that he wouldn't let up until she drank. The first sip made her face screw up, and he tried not to think of how he was forcing her to consume blood. She was halfway through when she started sobbing again. A little blood ran down her chin and he wiped it off with a finger and presented the finger to her mouth to clean off. When she spluttered, but struggled through, he hummed soothing notes of approval into her hair. The Cup was one-fifth full when she started choking. He pulled the Cup away immediately, concentric circles massaged into her back until she calmed. 'Will you trust me?' he asked, and she nodded and whimpered. 'Drink this, please. Just the rest, you haven't got much left.' She shook her head vigorously. 'Trust me. Please. I won't hurt you.'

And this once, she let herself believe him.


End file.
